“Smoke River packs some stunningly hard punches – here is racial tension rendered with penetrating insight, raw feeling, turbulent violence and profound compassion. Each page ripe with sensual imagery, searing with political clout. Krista Foss has written a morally complex, magnificently vivid novel full of characters who live and breathe. This is a dazzling debut.” –Lisa Moore, author of Caught and February

Please see the fantastic interview and review in the Hamilton Spectator here

Please see the fantastic profile in the Toronto Star here

An extraordinarily accomplished debut, Smoke River follows two families on different sides of a crisis with deep roots in history and territory through one fateful summer. For readers of Lori Lansens, Joseph Boyden, and John Bemrose's The Island Walkers.

After a proposed subdivision becomes the site of a Mohawk protest -- the land, which has long formed a kind of neutral border between a reserve and the neighbouring town, is contested -- tensions escalate through three sweltering summer months, exposing old wounds, as well as forging new and sometimes surprising connections.

This compelling contemporary story is told in the voices of several vivid, unforgettable characters, from the restless young Mohawk woman dreaming of adventure and fame in the wider world; to the successful businessman who has made good use of his position between two communities, and who harbours a surprisingly tender secret; to the high school hero whose inner life would shock his admirers, especially his ambitious mother; and to the unexpected lovers, who must weigh happiness against history and fierce pride. 

Smoke River is wise and tender, fearless and often very funny. It heralds the arrival of a vibrant, original, and intrepid new voice in Canadian literature. 

“The best books destroy you, overwhelm you with deep feelings- despair, anger, love, defiance, frustration, yearning, bitterness, pain. In her debut novel, former journalist and two-time Journey Prize finalist Krista Foss elicits precisely this reaction as she explores the ugly realities of aboriginal land disputes.” - Quill & Quire, Starred Review, May 2014

“Smoke River could have been trite, it could have been by-the-numbers, there could have been overt messages of systemic racism figuratively bashing readers over their heads, or it could have been full of caricatures leading up to the inevitable violence, on which lesser writers would rely… An over-her-head mayor, elders, cops, ex-lovers, politicos, lawyers, bandana-ed militants, shaven-headed rednecks in honky-tonks and pickups, and more than one Romeo-and-Juliet entanglement – every one of them is real and fleshed-out in Smoke River, none feeling false or manufactured.” -Winnipeg Free Press

“Smoke River is a tightly woven, eloquent exploration of uncomfortable realities in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal relations. Given her impressive writing skills, whatever story Foss next creates will be well worth the wait.” -Toronto Star

"Smoke River is contemporary realism torqued by Ontario gothic, and it's a welcome, skilled, involving cocktail." -Andrew Pyper, author of The Demonologist
 

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kontakt:

Agata Żabowska

agata@literatura.com.pl